Experiments on ion-acoustic solitary waves

Abstract

Ion-acoustic solitary wave (solitons) have been studied experimentally by employing a double-plasma device. The solitary waves are found to be produced from both a single compressional pulse and a continuous wave. A rarefaction pulse also produces solitons if the pulse width is sufficiently wide. A theory based on the Schrödinger equation accounts for the number of solitons. Recurrence to the original state is observed when a continuous wave is launched. A simple wave-wave coupling analysis for the recurrence of the original state is given.

Experimental Observation and Theoretical Description of Multisoliton Fission in Shallow Water

“…We also remark that a suitable expansion of Eq. (4) [35] shows that N s scales at leading order as 1/ε ∼ √ η 0 /ωh, in agreement with heuristic estimates given in the past [15,33]. Similar expansions also yield explicit estimates for the soliton amplitudes, which confirm the nearly linear variation of soliton peaks as observed in Figs.…”

“…Specific experiments for the periodic case were reported just recently by exploiting a optical harmonic (or modulated) wave ruled by the nonlinear Schrödinger model [11]. Conversely, for the KdV equation, little progress has been made since the early experiments on breaking of periodic waves in electrical transmission lines, water and ion acoustic waves [12][13][14][15]. In particular, in experiments on surface gravity waves, the recurrence phenomenon predicted by ZK remained elusive, and the observation of fission was limited to a few solitons [13,16,17], which left open even basic questions such as how many solitons can be expected to emerge under variable experimental conditions.…”

Ion-acoustic solitary waves in a high power pulsed magnetron sputtering discharge

“…Since the initial observation, refinements of the theory have gone hand in hand with extensive experimentation. This includes multiple soliton production in a double-plasma device [7,8] and excitation of cylindrical [9] and spherical [10] ion-acoustic KdV solitons. The multidipole plasma device [11,12] has served as a testing site for many of the experiments.…”

Dynamics of modulationally unstable ion-acoustic wavepackets in plasmas with negative ions

“…Washimi and Taniuti (1966), Su and Gardner (1969), Tappert (1972) and Tappert (1973) derived the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation for ion-acoustic waves propagating in a plasma that consists of electrons and one type of positive ions. The KdV solitons in electron-ion plasmas were experimentally studied by Ikezi (1973), Watanabe (1975), Tran (1979), Nakamura (1982) and Lonngren (1983). Das and Tagare (1975), Das (1977Das ( , 1979, Tagare (1986), Kalita and Devi (1993), Kalita and Barman (1995) and Kalita and Das (2002) generalized the derivation of the KdV equation for multicomponent plasmas, where there are both positive and negative ions.…”